Joint ventures in South Africa's land reform programme ... - ISS

valuable assets and growing the rural economy. The case of Moletele described here
suggests that the experience to date is not meeting these expectations and is proving
problematic in economic, social and political terms.
Moletele is a vast and complex restitution case, although only one-tenth of the total land
under claim has been transferred to date. Current budgetary and other constraints on
the part of the relevant state agencies raise doubts as to how much more land will
actually be restored to the community, and whether the promised ‘development grants’
will ever be paid out. 15 Initial experiments with joint ventures involving former land
owners experienced major difficulties, particularly around access to working capital, with
two out of three collapsing. This has led to the negotiation of new ‘community-private
partnerships’ with more powerful commercial partners such as Golden Frontier Citrus
and Bono-SAFE.
While much attention has been focused (in the South African media and elsewhere) on
the struggle to maintain productivity on the restored lands, much less has been paid to
the general failure of promised benefits to reach the ordinary members of affected
communities. At Moletele, as with other strategic partnerships in South Africa, the
promise was of substantial cash income in the form of rent and dividends, employment
and training opportunities, and the prospect of claimants eventually owning and running
their own successful commercial farming operation. Experience to date suggests that
those prospects remain very distant.
Twelve years after the lodgement of their restitution claim, and five years after the return
of the first lands, most households have yet to see any positive impact on their
livelihood 16 . This is obviously a source of great frustration for many, given the
expectations that were raised by the restoration of the land and the establishment of
commercial partnerships with private-sector operators, the huge sums of public money
consumed and the extensive participation by community members over many years in
discussions and planning exercises. Lack of direct access to the land by community
15 Mail and Guardian, 05 July 2010 – Land reform beneficiaries owed R 3,4bn by Government
16 Feedback from focus group meetings held July 2010 and November 2010.
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